Halong City Sanitation Project, Vietnam

The Halong City sanitation project is part of the $120m Three Cities Sanitation Project, an ongoing scheme since the mid-90s to improve the public health of 1.5 million citizens in Da Nang, Haiphong, and Quang Ninh Province (Halong City and Cam Pha).

The Three Cities Sanitation Project aims to reduce waterborne diseases, environmental problems and the adverse effects of flooding and poor sanitation through improved waste management and sanitation infrastructures.

HALONG CITY

Construction at Halong City began in February 2006 and was completed by October 2007. The project involved the construction and installation of a new Sequencing Batch Reactor (SBR) wastewater treatment plant outside of the city at Hon Gai. The project required 80km of drainage channels, 10km of sewer pipes and the construction of three sanitary landfills along with two septic sludge treatment plants (for areas too far from the new main sewer system).

The installation of the SBR involved the provision of 3.5km of pressure sewage pipelines (100mm to 500mm) and eight underground sewage-pumping stations with capacities ranging from 630m³ to 7,000m³ per day along with 10km of gravity sewers. The city authorities were provided with 27 new vehicles for the collection of solid waste and septic sludge. Grants were also made available from a revolving fund so that 11,000 households could install a septic tank.

The Halong City sanitation project borders Halong Bay, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, which demanded an even greater need for careful waste control and environmental preservation

CONTRACTORS

The main engineering firm behind the Halong City project was COWI of Denmark, which was responsible for the design, engineering and project management of the entire system while the Danish International Development Agency(Danida) provided technical assistance for the project.

The construction contract for the SBR system was awarded to a joint venture of Biwater Man Lee (BML) and local Vietnamese construction company Constrexim Holdings (Black and Veatch was also involved as a consultant engineer). The contract was awarded by the Urban Environment section of the People's Committee of Halong City, Quang Ninh Province.

The contract for the SBR construction was worth £3.8m, supported by the World Bank, IDA, IRDB, and the governments of Australia, Denmark and Finland.